Sure they do, but black/white people born into poverty may not strive after the achievements in the same way as is expected of middle/high class people do, which is where the majority resides.

Right, but because poverty disproportionally affects black people, this means that class issues are directly race issues. It means, for instance, that not addressing poverty equally means disproportionally not addressing race issues - i.e. that one race, on the balance, get more affected than another - even if you're not trying to directly do this. That's what 'structural racism' means. It doesn't require anyone saying or thinking 'I hate black people'. It simply requires that ones actions, because of certain distributions of goods in society, disproportionally affects a certain race. One could be nothing but kind to black people - and still partake in this kind of racism. It's a kind of 'objective' racism that has nothing to do with what one thinks or feels.

If Martin Luther king lived today he would be joyful over how far black people have progressed and how much freedom they have been given in society. — EpicTyrant

I'm really tired of this fantasy of Martin Luther King.

Martin Luther King did not believe in peaceful protest, and viewed peaceful protest as a degenerate political philosophy meant to appease those too cowardly to challenge the status quo yet who feel too guilty as to do nothing.

Civil Disobedience is not peaceful protest, but requires a physical confrontation with the police and will always be blamed as "the real violence" by racists and misguided centrists: because disobedience baits the police, disobedience disrupts "essential" economic activity, and disobedience is simply a violent insult to the traditions and institutions of racism; and indeed, it is lived as a fully violence act to the white supremacist and it is that violence which provokes the violence of police that makes civil disobedience effective (in that time), that most whites would be forced to action (in the street and at the ballot box) by their conscience and join blacks in a much more forceful movement than blacks alone.

The purpose of civil disobedience is based on his belief that most white people were not racist but had a fundamental desire to uphold christian values, that by forcing agents of the state to show their hatred for the black man, woman and child, and willingness (that they cannot help due to their hatred) to beat, kill and slaughter black men, women, and children clearly unprovoked in broad daylight and before the nation (unlike in the shadow of the alley or corner of the prison that can always be claimed to be provoked or otherwise deserved by the victim).

Furthermore, Martin Luther King is quite clear civil disobedience is only a tactical consideration and that he is, fundamentally, unified with and supports violent tactics also.

In the bursting mood that has overtaken the Negro in 1963, the word "compromise" is profane and pernicious. The majority of Negro leadership is innately opposed to compromise. Even were this not true, no Negro leader today could divert the direction of the movement or its compelling and inspired forward motion.

Many of our white brothers misunderstand this fact because many of them fail to interpret correctly the nature of the Negro Revolution. Some believe that it is the work of skilled agitators who have the power to raise or lower the floodgates at will. Such a movement, maneuvered by a talented few, would not be a genuine revolution. This Revolution is genuine because it was born from the same womb that always gives birth to massive social upheavals--the womb of intolerable conditions and unendurable situations. In this time and circumstance, no leader or set of leaders could have acted as ringmasters, whipping a whole race out of purring contentment into leonine courage and action. If such credit is to be given to any single group, it might well go to the segregationists, who, with their callous and cynical code, helped to arouse and ignite the righteous wrath of the Negro.

[...]

It was the people who moved their leaders, not the leaders who moved the people. Of course, there were generals, as there must be in every army. But the command post was in the bursting hearts of millions of Negroes. When such a people begin to move, they create their own theories, shape their own destinies, and choose the leaders who share their own philosophy. A leader who understands this kind of mandate knows that he must be sensitive to the anger, the impatience, the frustration, the resolution that have been loosed in his people. Any leader who tries to bottle up these emotions is sure to be blown asunder in the ensuing explosion.

[...]

The hard truth is that the unity of the movement is a remarkable feature of major importance. The fact that different organizations place varying degrees of emphasis on certain tactical approaches is not indicative of disunity.

[...]

only one answer can come from the depths of the Negro's being. That answer can be summarized in the hallowed American words: "If this be treason, make the most of it."
— Martin Luther King -- Why We Can't Wait

:up:

King was dangerous. And he's all the more a hero for it. The whitewashed fantasy of a kum-bay-yah peace loving King is just that - a whitewashed fantasy. King was a frikkin Marxist - albeit one critical of Marx, and who understood and spoke about the intimate link between class struggle and racial freedom.

the achievements in the same way as is expected of middle/high class people do, which is where the majority resides. — EpicTyrant

Achievement, or success, is a powerful American ideal. I think it’s more idealised in the US than any other nation. It’s a problem that it’s expected of everyone and it’s how many are judged. That in itself being a majority opinion is not the most healthy of situations for people who don’t take part in it.

Steve King has been voted out, meaning the GOP has lost a racist, but that's like Jabba the Hutt losing one pound.

Yes that's what i was pointing out in my first reply about it's origins in slavery and how they were automatically placed in this position after the abolishment of it and that their evolution as been slow because of this. Within given time, as it has been proven since before, things will get better. This is just people venting out frustration and nothing will probably come of these protests.

Good point about King. However I think non-violent resistance was not limited to civil disobedience, and included peaceful protests. And his dedication to nonviolence is quite explicit.

“ Occasionally in life one develops a conviction so precious and meaningful that he will stand on it till the end. This is what I have found in nonviolence”

- Where do we Go From Here.

This is wrong, because the effects of those origins work to entrench racial inequality at the present day. You said it yourself: poor black people are more likely to be raised in bad conditions, thus ensuring that they stay poor. These cycles of poverty perpetuate themselves across generations. They become self-sustaining. This is not a matter of linear growth, as if whites just got a head start on a straight road. These issues are intergenerational and cyclical, and thus ensure that they poor (and disproportionally black) stay poor. This is why things won't simply 'get better over time' without active intervention to change the structure of things. There's every chance things will get worse. Indeed, more black men are killed by police in recent times than they were at the height of lynching in the US.

It's kind of linear though, since it began with slavery>low class society>mixed society. It can get worse but according to the narrative and how much less racism there is compared to before, the evolution of a more tolerant society is on a positive scale and has been since the dawn of time. Things have always gotten better for humanity and we've found ways to improve ourselves by meddling and learning from chaotic times and our past mistakes.

Our basic will to strive for greatness will guide us through our journey as a life form in this time and space. Black people were taken into slavery and branded, white man has guilt and wows to seek redemption and learn how to integrate, with patience on both sides we will learn how to control the chaos of inequality.

It can get worse but according to the narrative and how much less racism there is compared to before, the evolution of a more tolerant society is on a positive scale and has been since the dawn of time — EpicTyrant

I agree things have, in broad outline, 'gotten better' for some people. But they have done so because of the kind of active, political intervention of the kind that you're seeing play out on American streets right now. People had to fight and bleed and die for this progress. It did not spring up out of some natural progression of history.

Good point about King. However I think non-violent resistance was not limited to civil disobedience, and included peaceful protests. And his dedication to nonviolence is quite explicit. — NOS4A2

Yes, he is dedicated to non-violence, but only for tactical reasons. He is quite clear he views violent resistance against oppression justifiable; the question being can it work.

For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in the airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected titles "Mrs."; when you are harried day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"-- then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged intro the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

You express great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all." — Martin Luther King -- Why We Can't Wait

Ahh what a fucking legend.

Yeah but this demonstration should be about police brutality and not black lives matter.
Lives for black people are already being improved for colored people around the world, which is made true by politics, you don't have to start a violent protest about it.

I can understand the reason for a violent protest about police brutality, since nothing is being done about it politically, but racial issues are another matter.

Lives for black people are already being improved for colored people around the world, which is made true by politics, you don't have to start a violent protest about it. — EpicTyrant

This is manifestly false.

How can you agree in the beforehand post that there has been improvements of certain colored people and now claim it's false? Everytime i look upon a picture of Americans in government or in a workplace i always see black people. Successful companies are filled with black people and they aren't even stereotyped as the first person to die in a horror movie anymore. Things are getting better.

It doesn't stop:

I must make two confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens' Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may provoke violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. — Martin Luther King--Why We Can't Wait

A rising tide can raise all boats while those on the bottom remain on the bottom. Remember: this is about disproportionate social distributions of social goods. And as far as police violence goes - the very reasons for the recent protests - blacks are most certainly disproportionally affected.

Secretary of Defence Esper is against deploying the military (except the National Guard, which is already deployed).

A common sense reply, that also tells Trump is going to have a new secretary of defence again, if he has the time to fire this one...

And so the blacks that rise with the tide gets immune to racism and accepted into society, while the bottom remains that the bottom because of the capitalism society structure of America. This just proves more that racism today is more about class level society and prejudices, whereas before it was about color. In a fictional society if there were a certain low life type of white people that commited crimes they would probably be branded as something sloggy as "The rats" and people would look down upon them in the same way as people look down on low society blacks that commit crime but respect black people that belong to their same societal sphere.

And so the blacks that rise with the tide gets immune to racism and accepted into society, while the bottom remains that the bottom because of the capitalism society structure of America. — EpicTyrant

Except this is not what is happening. And again, if the 'bottom' remain - and are kept - disproportionately black - that's structural racism.

Sure it is structural racism as a side effect of the slavery, but there is already being done much politically to improve it, which can be proven by the history of time. I can understand that black people have an identity of being targeted and that gives them freedom to defend themselves, but they fail to realize all the efforts that are being thrown into improving their life, or they fail to realize that much of that responsibility also lies on them.

I don't think you get to tell black people what they 'fail to realize'.

Well, then unless America becomes more socialist they are pre destined to remain on the bottom class level forever, unless they adopt a mindset to achieve something greater than the ghetto like Eminem for example.

unless they adopt a mindset to achieve something greater than the ghetto like Eminem for example. — EpicTyrant

You really need to watch your language.

But yes, unless America becomes more socialist indeed, it will remain a shitty, unjust nation.

Now, yes, MLK was against violence, in the tactical sense that it can achieve the goal without violence: it is therefore preferable.

I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the "do-nothingness" of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For htre is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle.

If this philosophy had not emerged, by now streets, I am convinced, be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as "rabble-rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negros will, our of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in back-nationalist ideologies.

[...]

If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist. — Martin Luther King, Why We Can't Wait

The problem with using MLK's legacy to chastise the violence today, is the obvious fact that Martin Luther Kings tactic did not work, otherwise we would not today, 60 years later, be witnessing lynching in the streets.

The white moderate did not join the black non-violent direct action cause and fix the problem of institutionalized racism, otherwise Trump would not be president.

Rather, the white moderate has tolerated not only the creation of a new system of oppression for blacks, in some ways worse than before (for the system of prison slavery is arguably worse than the system of segregation), but has tolerated the creation of this system of oppression, due to the absence of segregation, to include their own sons and daughters.

The violence today that is now "a fact of history" that Martin Luther King warned the white moderates about (before he was killed), is now not only a racial struggle but a inter-generational struggle.

In tolerating a new and improved cage of poverty for the black man and woman, the boomers and co. were willing to throw their own children into it.

What we are seeing on the streets is a young generation rallying around the largest and most obvious symbol of generational oppression, systemic racism, in a struggle against an enemy embodied by a 73 year old bumbling, racist fool.

In killing Martin Luther King and other nonviolent direct action leaders (because they are extremists), there is no one to negotiate with and the whole point of nonviolent direct action is moot in any case.

The current situation is that the entire younger generation is in "the womb of intolerable conditions and unendurable situations" and without legitimate leaders nor a competent enough elite to fix any problems anyways (even if they wanted to rather than just loot while the looting's good at a safe distance from the comfort of their New Zealand mansion, Mediterranean yacht, or Swiss chalet), the conditions will simply continue to get more intolerable and unendurable, and neither the fierce tactic of nonviolent direct action nor the docile irrelevance of peaceful protest is now helpful nor even doable (due to a lack of widely legitimate leadership): either Trump's state will win or then the people fighting it, and either way the methods of victory will not be signs, flowers and speeches.

There is no one in the white house willing to "sit down, make a deal" with the mob, there is no one in the mob with whom a deal can be made.

The fundamental error of the American elites (including the entire Democratic party, who also voted for the CARE Act) is that in a system maintained by bread and circuses, to believe that both the circus and the bread can be taken away simultaneously without the entire system crashing. It was a crazy dream, but history will be very clear: if the circus part is swept away by a pandemic, you betta double time yo ass to double down on the bread part. The CARE act is, in essence, the "let them eat brioche" moment of American political history. The lynching of George Floyd is simply "the spark that will light the fire that will burn the first order down."

For what it's worth, Trudeau admitting systemic racism. Remarkable by comparison to POTUS.

https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2020/06/03/derek-chauvins-murder-charge-will-now-be-2nd-degree-3-other-ex-mpd-officers-also-face-charges/

It's working. Keep it up!

A common sense reply, that also tells Trump is going to have a new secretary of defence again, if he has the time to fire this one. — ssu

Spot on. This is what's so historically new, the lack of basic common sense in the POTUS, and more importantly, the full backing of this insanity by the SCOTUS and Republican senate.

This ain't your 60s civil rights riots, that many are lulling themselves to believe, this is something entirely new (in American history; lot's of precedent in world history, none of which spontaneously "just went back to normal").

It's kind of linear though, since it began with slavery>low class society>mixed society. — EpicTyrant

I think “linear” was meant not in opposition to “non-linear” but to “exponential”. Being born to a wealthy family not only gives you a head start, but being ahead for any reason gives you a speed boost; and vice versa being behind for any reason. So the poor (and disproportionately black) get held back from advancing out of the lower position they’re already in, while the rich get a hand up in advancing even higher than they already are.

The class-race connection StreetlightX highlights has the interesting implication that a lot of structural racism can be fixed without explicitly addressing race at all. If you help all poor people equally regardless of race, you disproportionately help black people automatically because the poor are disproportionately black.

These incidents of racially biased police violence don’t look “structural” in that way though, as it seems the police are not just targeting the poor equally regardless of race, but targeting blacks specifically for racially motivated reasons.